As a student in the 1950s, Argento divided his time between the United States and Italy, and his music is greatly influenced both by his instructors in the United States and his personal affection for Italy, particularly the city of Florence. Many of Argento's works were written in Florence, where he spends a portion of every year.[2] He has been a professor (and, more recently, a professor emeritus) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He frequently remarks that he finds residents of that city to be tremendously supportive of his work, and that he thinks his musical development would have been impeded had he stayed in the high-pressure world of East Coast music.[2][3] He was one of the founders of the Center Opera Company (now the Minnesota Opera). Newsweek magazine once referred to the Twin Cities as "Argento's town."[3]

Argento has written fourteen operas as well as major song cycles, orchestral works, and many choral pieces for small and large forces. Many of these were commissioned for and premiered by Minnesota-based artists. He has referred to his wife, the soprano Carolyn Bailey, as his muse, and she was a frequent performer of his works. She died on February 2, 2006.

Argento, the son of Sicilian immigrants, grew up in York, Pennsylvania. He found his music classes in elementary school to be "fifty minute sessions of excruciating boredom" but would develop as an acclaimed composer.[3] Upon graduating from high school, he was drafted into the Army and spent some time as a cryptographer. Following the war and using funding from the G.I. Bill, he began studying piano performance at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.[1] He quickly decided to switch to composition.

He earned bachelor's (1951) and master's (1953) degrees from Peabody, where his teachers included Nicolas Nabokov, Henry Cowell, and Hugo Weisgall. While there, he was briefly the music director of Weisgall's Hilltop Musical Company, which the composer founded as a sort of answer to Benjamin Britten's festival at Aldeburgh—a venue for local composers (particularly Weisgall) to present new work. This experience gave Argento broad exposure to and experience in the world of new opera.[1] Hilltop's stage director was writer John Olon-Scrymgeour, with whom Argento would later collaborate on many operas. During this time period he also spent a year in Florence on a Fulbright Fellowship. He has called the experience "life-altering;" while there, he studied briefly with Luigi Dallapiccola.

Argento moved to Minneapolis in 1958 with his new wife Carolyn Bailey, a soprano singer,to begin teaching theory and composition at the University of Minnesota. Within a few years he received commissions from virtually every major performing group there. He has remarked that this constant feeling of strong community interest in his work made him feel particularly at home in Minnesota, although he had at first resisted moving there. For several years, he hoped that a position on his native East Coast would develop.[3]

Argento became involved in writing music for productions at the then-new Guthrie Theater. In 1963, he and Scrymgeour founded the Center Opera Company, which later became the Minnesota Opera, to be in residence at the Guthrie. Argento composed the short opera The Masque of Angels for the occasion as the first Performing Arts commission of the Walker Art Center. This work—with its complex harmonic language and an emphasis on expansive choral writing that prefigures his later role as a prominent choral composer—firmly established his local prominence, as well as providing a role for his wife. During this period, he also spent time with his childhood friend Russell Burris and his family at their cabin.

In the mid-1970s, Argento began writing choral works for the choir of Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis, which his friend, Philip Brunelle, directed.[3] The partnership with Brunelle was particularly fruitful, yielding commissions and premieres at Plymouth Church and at the Minnesota Opera, where Brunelle was Music Director. In this period Argento composed Jonah and the Whale (1973), co-commissioned by Plymouth Congregational Church and the Cathedral of St. Mark-Episcopal. Argento began to receive larger and larger commissions for choral works, eventually composing major pieces for the Dale Warland Singers, The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Buffalo Schola Cantorum, and most recently the Harvard and Yaleglee clubs.

The recording by Frederica von Stade and the Minnesota Orchestra of his song cycle, Casa Guidi, won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Argento's book Catalogue Raisonné as Memoir, an autobiographical discussion of his works, was published in 2004.

Argento is now retired from teaching but he retains the title of Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota. He lives in Minneapolis, and continues to produce new musical compositions. The world premiere of his latest piece, Evensong: Of Love and Angels, was presented by the Cathedral Choral Society in March 2008 at Washington National Cathedral. The work was written in memory of his late wife and in honor of the centennial of the Washington National Cathedral.

Argento's operatic output is eclectic and extensive. Two of his early operas, written while he was a student—Sicilian Limes and Colonel Jonathan the Saint—have been withdrawn by the composer. His The Boor, written in 1957 as part of his PhD work, was published by Boosey & Hawkes. He collaborated with John Olon-Scrymgeour on a number of works, including The Masque of Angels; Christopher Sly (1962), based on an episode from The Taming of the Shrew; and The Shoemaker's Holiday, (1967) a "ballad opera" based on a play by Thomas Dekker.

After the success of Postcard from Morocco in 1971, which had a libretto by Jon Donahue, the commissions given him were much larger. The University of Minnesota and Minnesota Opera together commissioned The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe in 1975-76, with a libretto by Charles Nolte. As a result of that work, which received wildly enthusiastic reviews upon its premiere,[3] the New York City Opera commissioned him. He composed Miss Havisham's Fire (1977), with a libretto by Scrymgeour. Although not well received initially, Argento eventually revised it into a one-act form entitled Miss Havisham's Wedding Night (1981). He revised Miss Havisham's Fire in 1995 and it has been successfully revived and performed since.

In 1984, the Minnesota Opera commissioned Casanova's Homecoming, with text by the composer; it went on to a well-received run at New York City Opera. At the insistence of Beverly Sills, then musical director of the company, the opera was the first in New York City to be performed in English and accompanied with English supertitles. She wanted to ensure that the audience would understand all the jokes.[3] The opera won the 1986 National Institute for Music Theatre Award.

Argento next composed The Aspern Papers (1987) as a vehicle for Frederica von Stade, with his own libretto adapted from the 1888 novella by Henry James. His next opera, and arguably largest work to date, was The Dream of Valentino, which premiered at the Kennedy Center in 1993. Critic Anne Midgette of the New York Times in 2006 noted that Argento's operas tend to be very well received upon their premieres, but they lack an "easy popular hook" and are rarely revived.[5]

Argento's song cycles are notable for his frequent use of dramatic, unusual text, most often prose that does not have immediately apparent musical possibilities. His works blur the distinction between straightforward groupings of songs and dramatic works, which he terms "monodramas". His best-known song cycle is From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, with a text he assembled from the book of the title. Written for Janet Baker in 1974, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music and is performed frequently.

Other prominent works in a similar vein include Letters from Composers (1968), which uses as its text letters written by Chopin, Puccini, and others; Casa Guidi (1983), which sets letters written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; and A Few Words About Chekhov (1996), which adapts letters by Chekhov.

The Andrée Expedition (1980) includes journal entries made by Swedish balloonist Salomon Andrée and excerpts from a personal diary and letters of his companion Nils Strindberg during their failed three-man expedition in 1897 to travel to the North Pole by hydrogen balloon; and

Miss Manners on Music (1998) sets to music newspaper clippings by American 20th-century advice columnist Judith Martin (aka "Miss Manners"). One of the few major song sets Argento has written that use "traditional" verse as text is his popular Six Elizabethan Songs.

Other solo vocal works by Argento include:

Songs About Spring (1950–55), text by E. E. Cummings, for voice and piano

Ode to the West Wind (1956), text by Shelley, for soprano and orchestra

To Be Sung Upon the Water (1972), text by Wordsworth, for voice, clarinet and piano

The Bremen Town Musicians (1998), text by the composer, a "children's entertainment" with narrator and orchestra

Argento's The Masque of Angels (1963) has sections, such as the "Gloria" and "Sanctus", which are frequently excerpted and performed separately. His next major choral work was The Revelation of St. John the Divine (1968), which sets portions of the Book of Revelation from the Bible; it is scored for male chorus, brass, and an array of percussion instruments.

Argento composed a massive Te Deum in 1987, which integrates the Latin text with medieval English folk poetry. A Toccata of Galuppi's (1989), a 20-minute setting of a Robert Browning poem, is one of many works inspired by Argento's times in Florence. In 2008, the Harvard Glee Club premiered his Apollo in Cambridge, a multi-movement setting of texts by Harvard-affiliated writers of the 19th century.

Argento's non-vocal output is relatively small; there are, for example, no symphonies, and just one string quartet written when he was a student. He has produced numerous orchestral suites based on his operas, including Le tombeau d'Edgar Poe (1985), adapted from The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe, and the popular Valentino Dances (1994), from The Dream of Valentino. He has written two ballets that were then fashioned into orchestral suites, The Resurrection of Don Juan (1956) and Royal Invitation (Homage to the Queen of Tonga) (1964). His 1982 Fire Variations was nominated for the Kennedy Center Fridheim Prize in Music.